My Very Own You by Little Big League
Little Big League is an Philadelphia rock band consisting of Michelle Zauner (guitar & vocals), Deven Craige (bass), Kevin O’Halloran (guitar), & Ian Dykstra (drums). They released their debut album These Are Good People. in 2013 and Tropical Jinx in 2014. Since then Zauner moved back to Oregon to be with her mother who was diagnosed with cancer and the band has not released an album since. Currently Little Big League sits at 8,255 monthly listeners on Spotify making them a wonderful candidate for our Artist Spotlight.
Little Big League is best described as Rock-N-Roll. They have mesmerizing guitar solos with a wonderful ability to compose a song. Michelles vocals are… unique. Taken by themselves I would consider them adequate, but the band does a good job of mixing them in, using them as an instrument to tie the song together.
Their best song is My Very Own You, a short 2 minute track from their debut Album. I hope you enjoy. Lyrics and commentary below.
Lyrics (courtesy of genius.com)
Tell me all the parts I conquered first
Cause I know your kind, you’re a bad, bad girl
My very own you
Show me every inch they couldn’t reach
I will bring and claim bricks to build my place
My very own you
Tell me who
Who, who?
Tell me who
Who?
My very own you
Commentary
I love this song; musically it really resonates with me. It starts with this very interesting guitar riff, hits hard with the vocals and drums, then quickly changes the pace. During the break down Michelle’s ‘who who who’ are great. But my favorite part is the explosion of music at 1:37. Overall, it’s a beautiful 2 minutes.
I struggle with the meaning of this song. I think it could be about how we all fool ourselves in our infatuation with new partners. We fall for our own version of people, rather than who they really are. We make each person into my very own you.
In a similarly naive way we may even see ourselves as our new partner’s white knight – Tell me all the parts I conquered first… Show me every inch they couldn’t reach. I will bring and claim bricks to build my place. This is easy because they are just reciprocating our infatuation. We seem like everything they have been looking for, but really they are just making us into they’re very own us.
I think if everyone asked more questions at the beginning of relationships then maybe there would be less hurt in the world. It would prevent us from being disappointed because our partner didn’t live up to who we thought they were. It reminds me of a quote I once heard in my pre-marriage class, “resentment comes from unmet expectations.”
You can follow Little Big League on Twitter and Facebook and buy their music from iTunes or bandcamp. As always I would really love it if you shared this or another article from The Unheard with your friends. If you really love this song/vocals you can find Michelle’s more recent (lo-fi) music under her new stage name Japanese Breakfast.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Big_League_(band)
https://genius.com/Little-big-league-my-very-own-you-lyrics